Android enthusiasts hack Honeycomb to run on Nook Color

The Nook Color has been hacked to run an experimental port of Android 3. …

The Android-based Nook Color has attracted an enthusiastic community of modders who extend the functionality of the $250 touchscreen e-book reader by installing custom firmware and third-party applications. After-market enhancements can transform the e-book reader into a modest tablet computing device.

The latest feat achieved by the Nook modding community is a working port of Android 3.0, codenamed Honeycomb. Android 3.0 introduces Google's new user interface for devices with a tablet form factor and also includes new APIs that are intended to simplify the development of Android applications for tablets.

The unofficial port of Honeycomb to the Nook is still at a relatively early stage of development, but it already has working support for hardware-accelerated rendering on the Nook hardware. This is a highly significant revelation because it demonstrates the potential suitability of Honeycomb for lower-end devices.

NVIDIA's dual-core Tegra 2 chipset is regarded as the reference hardware for Honeycomb. When it became apparent that Honeycomb was targeting dual-core hardware with high-end 3D graphics capabilities, concerns were raised about whether it would be able to run on more conventional devices. Google has repeatedly debunked the claim that Honeycomb will require a dual-core processor in order to function. The new Nook port shows unambiguously that Android 3.0 doesn't require bank-breaking specs.

Although the port is an impressive achievement, more work is needed before Android 3.0 will be practical for day-to-day use on the Nook. It's still missing some critical features, such as WiFi support. It's worth noting that Google hasn't even officially released the code for Android 3.0 yet—the modders are pulling the new version of the operating system out of the software development kit that Google recently made available as a preview.

It's likely that Android 3.0 on the Nook will get a big boost when Google does the official code drop. We expect that to take place in the next month or two, at some point after Motorola launches its Honeycomb-based Xoom tablet.

very cool...I'm going to be keeping my eye on this...I'm going to be buying a tablet closer to the end of this year but don't want to pay $500 for an iPad let alone ~$700 for a Xoom...this may be my solution.

Hasn't most of the rumormongering about 3.0's minimum hardware specs been related to allowing devs to be able to assume a much higher minimum baseline hardware performance level to give a simpler way to say "your phone is too slow"; rather than the addition of revolutionary features that absolutely require state of the art hardware to work?

The only exception to this I've seen has been speculation from last summer that a 720p screen would be a minimum requirement.

The Honeycomb image has been posted on xda-developers now. Looks like wifi and the accelerometer work now, but sound and hardware video decoding don't work yet. Considering how fast this is progressing, I'd expect those to be working by the end of the week.

Hasn't most of the rumormongering about 3.0's minimum hardware specs been related to allowing devs to be able to assume a much higher minimum baseline hardware performance level to give a simpler way to say "your phone is too slow"; rather than the addition of revolutionary features that absolutely require state of the art hardware to work?

The only exception to this I've seen has been speculation from last summer that a 720p screen would be a minimum requirement.

The preview API documentation makes it very clear that Honeycomb is not a fork of the Android, all apps are upwards compatible and it is implied that the 3.0 APIs will eventually be available on phones. Apps using the 2.x API can target a new extra large screen size and apps using the 3.0 API can target the smaller screen sizes. It is possible to create an app that only targets the large screen sizes by setting a filter for the Android Market, but this is not the default.

Frankly, some of the features of the API, particularly GPU acceleration of UI components should be beneficial for phones going back to the original Droid.

Just updated the girlfriend's NC to the latest image last night to keep it from auto-updating and losing root. Will definitely be following this and waiting for a stable release. Depending on performance I may be tempted to skip my early policy of waiting on a tablet and pick one of these up for tweaking. I can imagine that the price is so low because it is subsidized by book sales so if these really blow up as hobbyist platforms, I wonder how long they will stay cheap and how long until they are harder to modify. B&N doesn't seem super anti-hacking regarding the Nook but I can only imagine how that might change if half of the ones they sell are being used as tablets and not eBook stores.

Here I am, with my rooted Nook Color sitting right next to my laptop, when I read that headline. And just yesterday I was actually thinking, "Hmm, I haven't been over to xda-dev in a while, I wonder what they're up to ..."

There's no exploit involved. The Nook Color boots from any SD card inserted.

Aye, which is what makes the Nook fantastic. It's rare in the Android ecosystem, however. Look at something like an HTC Desire. Or gods forbid, anything by Motorola. Do you blame that on Android not being open? ARM? The manufacturers? The fact that ARM doesn't have a universal BIOS-style bootloader certainly opens the door for *&$^*&% like Motorola to lock their gear down tight. Google could have specified that Android had to use a Universal bootloader.

But then; is that “open?” It’s a removal of choice from the manufacturers in order to give choice to the consumers. What exactly is open, anyways? Is open source enough to be “open?” What if the code is released after the actual launch of the device? (Usually in order to give a certain manufacturer a lead in the market.) Who defines “open?” Apple claim they are “open.” Google bounce up and down about how “open” they are. Microsoft claims that the ability to modify the hardware any way you want and run any application of your choice makes their desktops “open.” (Which given the licence restrictions to hardware change is bunkum, but anyways…)

I can’t define “open” in a completely non-controversial IT sense. The word has almost lost all meaning. So when someone asks me if something is “open,” then I eschew the concept of avoiding controversy. To me, “open” is “does this device/software/etc prevent me in any way from doing whatever I want to the item that I OWN.” If the answer is “yes,” even in a minor way, then it is not “open” by my definition.

The Nook is one device that is rarity. You can pretty much make it do whatever you want. The majority of Android devices are not similarly kind to the consumer.